PSU launches campaign to 'ReThink' the university

Student debt is ballooning. State support for higher education is shrinking. Enrollment in free online courses offered by universities like Stanford and Harvard is growing.

In the face of those pressures, Oregon leaders want 40 percent of Oregonians to earn a bachelor's degree.

It's an enormous challenge for the leaders of the state's colleges and universities.

For this Friday's print edition of the Business Journal, I reported on Portland State University's "ReThink PSU" campaign, an effort to address the numerous challenges faced by universities.

Part of the effort is a campus-wide dialogue called the Provost's Challenge, which is soliciting ideas for how Portland State can change the way it does business.

"For us to succeed as an institution and particularly to meet the governor’s goals, we have to rethink our basic model of how we do education," Portland State President Wim Wiewel told me. "We can’t just tinker on the edges and the margins."